Just say no to Christmas?

By Judy Keen, USA TODAY

Susan Lee, a divorced mother of three in New York City, is taking a drastic step this year. "No Christmas for me," she says. "No gifts, no turkey, no tree, no kidding."

By Denny Simmons, for USA TODAY

Griffin Holland, with mom Sarah Stewart Holland, plays in his family's Paducah, Ky., home on Dec. 14. The family has scaled back on Christmas spending, and Griffin will get gifts stashed after his birthday celebration.

Griffin Holland, with mom Sarah Stewart Holland, plays in his family's Paducah, Ky., home on Dec. 14. The family has scaled back on Christmas spending, and Griffin will get gifts stashed after his birthday celebration.

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Lee, 41, a marketing consultant, says she needs a break from the stress and spending that are integral parts of the holiday. Her kids will celebrate a traditional Christmas with their dad, but she's ignoring all the rituals.

"I start dreading Christmas from the time the decorations go up in the stores," she says. "It stopped being fun for me, so I'll find out this year if I can do without it altogether. I think it will be a relief. It already is."

The holiday is in no danger of extinction. Retail sales broke records over the Thanksgiving weekend, and online sales are up 15% from 2010, according to ComScore, a research company. A Gallup Poll found that Americans expect to spend an average of $764 on Christmas gifts, $50 more than a year ago. And forecasters expect spending on Christmas to rise 3.1% to $3.4 billion this holiday season.

Still, says Leah Ingram, who runs the Suddenly Frugal blog at suddenlyfrugal.com, many people are scaling way back this year, if not opting out of Christmas completely. Homemade presents and shared experiences are replacing expensive store-bought gifts among people who are feeling the pinch financially and those who object to the season's rampant consumerism.

Some people simply loathe the holiday. A Facebook search for "I hate Christmas" turns up dozens of results, including pages and posts from people who say they despise almost everything about Christmas: music, shopping, family gatherings, trees and lights.

Others have no choice but to downsize Christmas. Kate Pearson, 33, a single mom in Atlanta, lost her secretarial job in January and has told her two children that they're starting new traditions this year.

They drew a festive, 6-foot tree on craft paper and taped it to a wall. "Instead of gifts, which I can't afford, we're writing letters to each other that we will open on Christmas morning," she says. "We're going to tell each other what we love about our family. And that's it."

Pearson says she's looking forward to a bare-bones Christmas. "I cringe when I think of all the money I've spent in previous years on Christmas plates, napkins, candy, decorations and junk," she says. "Never again, even after I find a new job."

Watching their spending

Sarah Stewart Holland loves Christmas, but there's a lot less of it in her life this year.

She and her husband, Nicholas Holland, decided that real Christmas trees are too expensive, so they borrowed an artificial one from her parents.

They're not buying gifts for their son Griffin, 2, or his brother Amos, 6 months. They stashed some of the presents Griffin received for his birthday and will wrap and put them under the tree.

They won't exchange presents with each other or family members. Instead of their usual holiday open house, they'll have a potluck dinner with their closest friends.

"We're trying to be conscious about our spending," says Stewart Holland, 30, who lives in Paducah, Ky., and blogs at saltandnectar.com. She and her husband, 32, both are paying off student loans from law school.

There's another reason for paring Christmas hoopla, she says: "We want to live more conscientiously and not just do something because we've always done it." She's dubbed their holiday strategy "Christmas without consuming."

Mark O'Brien, 47, a Chicago computer analyst, says he can afford Christmas; he just doesn't want anything to do with it.

O'Brien, who is single, has turned down invitations to share Christmas dinner with friends and plans to spend the day in front of his TV, watching basketball games and eating pizza.

"I"m not a Scrooge," he says, "but I'm not religious, and I don't like all the forced frivolity of the season.

"My friends and family know I care about them, and I don't need to give them presents or sing carols with them to prove it."

Getting more relaxed

Some people who have downscaled their Christmas celebrations say the change made them saner, more relaxed and less indebted.

Jim Arnold, 56, a writer in Los Angeles, spent Christmas in Brazil a few years ago. The low-key approach there, he says, made him realize he could "disconnect" from consumerism and redefine his own holiday.

He stopped buying gifts and sending cards but says he still looks forward to "the parties and the cookies."

"People drive themselves crazy over Christmas," he says, "and I don't think very many of them are really happy about it."

Ingram says some gentle etiquette is required when a person decides to stop gift-giving in a family that expects it. "Opting out of the commercialism of the holidays works only if everybody buys into it, and that's where it gets tricky," she says.

In some cases, it might mean forgoing a family gathering where gifts are exchanged to avoid an "incredibly awkward" moment, she says.

When Rob Weir and his wife, Emily, suggested an end to family gift exchanges a few years ago, relatives "were shocked by it," he says. "They thought we were parsimonious or that we didn't care anymore. We realized we needed a strategy."

They dropped hints long before Christmas that they didn't really need gifts for themselves, says Weir, a history professor in his 50s who lives in Northampton, Mass. Gradually, they discovered that many of their family members felt the same way about buying presents for everyone.

"It took two or three years before the relatives got on board," he says. "You have to kind of phase it in."

Now the Weirs make charitable donations in the names of their relatives. Instead of family gatherings, they dine out with friends. Occasionally, they buy a bottle of wine for friends, and they treat themselves to a concert or show and buy a new ornament for their tree instead of exchanging gifts with each other.

"I sort of let the season happen," Weir says. "There's more freedom in our schedule if we don't have to spend time at the mall." When he mentions his new holiday traditions to friends now, he says, they often say, "Oh, what a good idea."

Change is 'liberating'

Irene Levine wrote a column for The Huffington Post in 2008 explaining why she was skipping Christmas. She wanted to save gas by not going to malls, save trees by sending fewer cards and save money, she wrote.

Besides, she noted, she's a secular Jew who wondered "how I got sucked into this tradition anyway."

"I was losing the joy of both shopping and gifting," she says now.

The change "was liberating" and resulted in much less stressful holidays, says Levine, a New York University psychiatry professor and writer. Before the column, she bought about 60 holiday gifts.

She's easing back into giving now, but she'll still dispense only about 20 this year, mostly gift cards.

"It's less anxiety-producing because it feels like there's more room for pleasure and less need for perfunctory gifts," she says.

Some people who wish they could have a full-blown Christmas celebration cannot, says Joan Rhodes of Neighbors Inc., a community service organization in the St. Paul suburbs.

A year ago, she says, Neighbors Inc. was helping about 230 families with food aid; in November, the number was 344. More than 700 people have signed up for adopt-a-family Christmas programs so they can receive clothing and toys.

For most clients, Rhodes says, "There simply isn't enough money for food, much less to buy presents."

Each year, she says, the organization receives notes after Christmas that say, "If it wasn't for Neighbors, we would not have had a Christmas."

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